How to Prioritize: Success Secrets

Video Transcript

Hi I'm Kerul Kassel author of "Stop Procrastinating Now" and "Productive Procrastination" and on behalf of Expert Village this segment is about simple methods for prioritizing because not everything is important even if we think it is. So how do we prioritize? We think everything is important and we end up getting frustrating and overwhelmed because there is so many things we have to do. Well here is a simple and easy method for doing that this is called prioritizing your to do list and all I got is four columns, the item that we want to work on how important is it to you, how urgent it is, and then we total that score. Now what we are doing here is we are looking at it at a scale of one to ten. Where low is low importance and one is lower urgency. So we are going to rate each item on each of these measures importance and urgencies. So here are a whole list of to do's we need to make them smaller because when we have too many to do's we just get paralyze because there is so many things. We don't know what to do first and this is the best way to determining that say that we have to finish a report for work well we are going to weight it in terms of importance. Now these are just sample rating that I have giving but obviously your rate it the way that you want to. Importance I'm giving this a eight urgencies because it is due very soon I'm giving it a nine. So we total it at seventeen. I also want to get my desk decluttered. How important is that to me? Well I know that it is impeding my ability to get things done. It is fracturing my focus so I think it is a nine in term to importance. But urgencies there is not so much that is really urgent about decluttering my desk so a combination will only leave us with twelve. You have a book that you want to write that we are working on, I know a lot of people, a lot of clients are like that they are working on a books. How important is that to me it is really important it is a ten. I think I would be disappointed if looking back that I didn't get that book out of me. But it is not that urgent it is only a two so it is only rating a twelve. Now remember this is looking at things the way they are today. I want to go for a work out that is very important to me to and to me it is urgent cause I have a high school reunion coming up so it is rating a nineteen that is a pretty high number. I have a thank you not to write for a gift that someone gave me if it never got done and remember you are rating this on importance on the grand over all scheme of your life rather than just everything is important. You need to have some prospective when you are rating importance. So if I never wrote a thank you note to this person will they hate me forever, will my life fall apart. Now, so I'm giving it a seven I might be able to give it a three or a four or even a five and I'm saying it is a eight cause it has been a week since I got that gift for a total of fifteen. Mowing the lawn importance it is eight because I might get a violation from my community if I don't mow it and it urgent cause it is getting to the point they could ticket me if I didn't mow my lawn for a total of eighteen. Get a oil change is important to have your car in good running condition. Urgent well it is at eight so a total of seventeen. A date with my spouse very important if I want to keep my marriage in tact urgent well I had a date with my spouse a couple of weeks ago so if I don't have a date this week the world is not going to fall apart but it is still somewhat urgent for a total of eighteen. Now we can look at the right hand column and say what do I need to make sure I accomplish today. Certainly the workout, finish the report. Here are two eighteens, mow the lawn and a date with a spouse. I may not have a date with my spouse today but I will schedule it today and then you will see there is a another seventeen to get the oil change and again I may not get the oil change today but at least I will schedule it in my calender for today or the next day.

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